Recall that on the first manned moon landing, the software screwed up and the lander would have been lost if the pilot hadn't taken manual control at the last minute!
Actually, Cyc is open-source. Check out the OpenCyc project on sf.
Cyc wasn't always a comercial concern. It was a university research project - until they realised that is a dead-end road for AI research (not being embodied etc.).
Don't listen to 'ol Minsky
on
AI Going Nowhere?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
As an AI researcher and someone who's read Minsky's books and listened to him talk - I can say that he doesn't know what he's talking about. He was big in his time, but things have moved on and he hasn't. He is an old, pesimistic, armchair AI 'researcher' who still thinks AI is easy. He doesn't understand why AI needs to be embodied and situated.
Having said that, I do agree that AI is almost going nowhere (anyone can see that). But I don't believe Minsky understands why.
Those 'stupid little robots' are the best thing to happen to AI - unfortunately most AI 'researchers' don't really understand what they're doing. Consequently, 97% of the time and effort purported being spend on AI research, isn't.
With a few exceptions, the main reason for the 'advances' we're seeing in AI/robotics now, is that algorithms are riding the wave of advances in computing power.
My guess is that you'll see most of the advances in AI coming as more and more 'real scientists' from other disciplines - such as ethology, biology and neurology - get involved in it.
Keep in mind that this is my opinion - shared by an increasing number of people in the field, but still a small minority.
I've just signed to have a 2500sq/ft house built to. Where did you buy the cabling? What about wall plates etc. - can you recommend an online supplier?
The main telecom in Australia has a two-way satellite service available Australia wide (mostly for rural areas). They also have a 1-way satellite with modem back channel.
Perhaps you can check their web-site and e-mail their tech's - perhaps they'll be willing tell you the setup they use.
Failing that - are there any slashdot readers that have this service? - if so, what is your setup?
I work at X-10, which is 'next-door' to Y-12. The museum is still open - it is in the Oak Ridge town itself - not at Y-12.
I have no idea what it was like 10-20 years ago, but it wasn't that interesting 3 years ago. Worth a look if you're in the vicinity, but I personally wouldn't travel to just visit it.
I am currently involved with the development of a middleware system called
Scientific Annotation Middleware - SAM. One of the services that we are in the process of implementing is a Notorization Service that can be used by a 3rd party for signing document hashes. We use the XML signiture spec./infrastructure.
In particular we'll be developing Notebook services and a SAM electronic-notebook that will use the notorization service for exactly the purpose you seek.
Unfortunately, it won't be viable/released for end-user use for at least a couple more years.
There are other e-notebooks that have been developed (by us and other parties), but none of them have legally acceptable notorization capabilities to date.
Perhaps you could use this as an opportunity to help drag the USA into the 21st century but using those wireless handheld credit-card swipe devices that are common in Europe, Japan and elsewhere?
There is nothing worse in the US than being ready to leave after a nice meal, the waiter/waitress having dissapeared somewhere with your credit card, and you are waiting impatiently for their return - which often takes an inordinate amount of time for some reason (perhaps they get distracted?).
There are several low-cost PDAs that can run Linux around.
Animal Rights is a form of anthropomorphising, attributing (wrongly) human traits to animals.
<whine>
"Animals have feelings too..."
</whine>
As a scientist who studies cognition in all animals, including humans, I can tell you that in the case of any mammal, while their feelings are not the same as ours, they're pretty damn close.
Luckily, they don't have the same broad autobiographical understanding of 'self', and hence don't feer death in the same way (they typically have a very shallow understanding of death, but still obviously fear pain)
Having said that; I aggee with your first statement, but probably not with specifically which traits.
When fresh, most onions are already tear-free. Its only if you leave them sitting around for 3-4 days that they start to slowly decompose and produce the chemicals that cause tearing.
Perhaps a better solution would be to improve the terrible quality of packaging, distribution and inventory management of most retailers of onions so that consumers can get them fresh. This would obviously benefit almost all other produce as well.
It would be better if the new high-res pictures could be more easily identified with the originals (I know it is hard with the difference in lighting angles, etc.)
I can just imagine what the conspiracy theorists are thinking now - 'those are not pictures of the same features - cover up! cover up!'
Europe emphasized cooperation over competition, consensus and agreement over "let's try it and see what happens". It was viewed as important that there be compatibility over the whole continent, and to achieve that they outlawed competition. In the US, we valued competition, and ironically we not only ended up with compatibility over the whole continent but got that compatibility with a superior system which emerged out of competition.
I think Steven is missing the point. He claims (twice) that the chaos in the US was temporary and not longer exists. That is a joke. I have a sprint phone and I'm often somewhere that I have no service, but my friend's GSM phone does, or vice-versa. I also work only 15miles from a city and the interstate, but my sprint phone goes into Analog roam mode! Call that not chaotic?? It's a joke.
So for the last 20years, the GSM world has had seemless coverage and portability, while the US is still a mess (I have a tri-band phone! - imaging how expensive that is to make).
Macro-economics 101 reminds us that the price of a good or service is determined by the intersection of supply and demand curves. That is, it has nothing to do with the price of manufacturing of the phones or the infrastructure rollout (except by providing a lower limit). I'm glad the GSM companies sholdered the larger costs of a less efficient technology for the last 20 years - and I'll be glad when I move back to a GSM country too!
Ask yourself why the US is among those developed countries with the lowest per-capita adoption of cell phones.
I'm going to make my next phone a 3G while I leave Steven trying to understand his analog roaming fees on his quad-band phone that won't work at all outside the US:)
It's probably a survival mechanism. It also occurs in humans, but is exceedingly rare (I don't remember the medical term for it). Something like only 3 cases ever recorded in the US.
If I understand LVM correctly, it doesn't do what the poster wishes. It will allow him to choose which logical subdirs reside where, but not have all his files everywhere.
It seems like a distributed filesystem, like InterMezzo or Coda would be a better match. That way his files are everywhere and the fs automatically manages updates regardless of where changes are made - including after disconnected operation.
I was in exactly your position. I thought that having Math listed as a Major on my record would be well worl it. Well it wasn't.
I wish I'd spent the time to take some of the other classes I was interested in. In the end what mattered were my math skills, not if math was listed on my transcript as a major or not. A couple classes in undergrad won't make much difference to your math skills anyway.
Once you have some experience, you'll be able to teach yourself any math you need from text books and papers/journals. Typically you'll forget much of what you learnt in undergrad, but become more expert in the areas you use. When you find that you need to brush up on stuff you've done in undergrad but forgotten - relearning the second time will be much easier.
So my advice is, unless you want to primarily be a mathematician, drop a couple classes and broaden your education instead.
Throw it up on source-forge and invite anyone to help finishing writing it! I'm sure many would be thrilled to be able to say a little piece of their code is responsible for launching a shuttle.
NASA could just try to sustain a team responsible for writing, maintain and running test cases over the code so they could still be confident it works as specified.
Failing all else, why not buy a PDA and write an app that mimics the interface of the calculator? (or modify it to be whatever you want). There are bound to be open source calculator apps for Palm OS out there you can start with and modify.
Slashdot Mirror
Recall that on the first manned moon landing, the software screwed up and the lander would have been lost if the pilot hadn't taken manual control at the last minute!
Actually, Cyc is open-source. Check out the OpenCyc project on sf.
Cyc wasn't always a comercial concern. It was a university research project - until they realised that is a dead-end road for AI research (not being embodied etc.).
As an AI researcher and someone who's read Minsky's books and listened to him talk - I can say that he doesn't know what he's talking about. He was big in his time, but things have moved on and he hasn't. He is an old, pesimistic, armchair AI 'researcher' who still thinks AI is easy. He doesn't understand why AI needs to be embodied and situated.
Having said that, I do agree that AI is almost going nowhere (anyone can see that). But I don't believe Minsky understands why.
Those 'stupid little robots' are the best thing to happen to AI - unfortunately most AI 'researchers' don't really understand what they're doing. Consequently, 97% of the time and effort purported being spend on AI research, isn't.
With a few exceptions, the main reason for the 'advances' we're seeing in AI/robotics now, is that algorithms are riding the wave of advances in computing power.
My guess is that you'll see most of the advances in AI coming as more and more 'real scientists' from other disciplines - such as ethology, biology and neurology - get involved in it.
Keep in mind that this is my opinion - shared by an increasing number of people in the field, but still a small minority.
I've just signed to have a 2500sq/ft house built to. Where did you buy the cabling? What about wall plates etc. - can you recommend an online supplier?
Thanks.
Anyone?
By making the surfaces of the sphere and the scales nearly perfectly smooth! :) That way, friction will be very high.
I once saw a video of a very smooth sphere rolling down a very smooth vertical surface - it rolled very very slowly (a barely perceptible movement).
The main telecom in Australia has a two-way satellite service available Australia wide (mostly for rural areas). They also have a 1-way satellite with modem back channel.
Perhaps you can check their web-site and e-mail their tech's - perhaps they'll be willing tell you the setup they use.
Failing that - are there any slashdot readers that have this service? - if so, what is your setup?
Their two-way satellite web-site is here
I work at X-10, which is 'next-door' to Y-12. The museum is still open - it is in the Oak Ridge town itself - not at Y-12.
I have no idea what it was like 10-20 years ago, but it wasn't that interesting 3 years ago. Worth a look if you're in the vicinity, but I personally wouldn't travel to just visit it.
The name of the image file on the page is Disney.jpg.
Hmmm.
I am currently involved with the development of a middleware system called Scientific Annotation Middleware - SAM. One of the services that we are in the process of implementing is a Notorization Service that can be used by a 3rd party for signing document hashes. We use the XML signiture spec./infrastructure.
In particular we'll be developing Notebook services and a SAM electronic-notebook that will use the notorization service for exactly the purpose you seek.
Unfortunately, it won't be viable/released for end-user use for at least a couple more years.
There are other e-notebooks that have been developed (by us and other parties), but none of them have legally acceptable notorization capabilities to date.
One of the best speech understanding systems in existance is OpenCyc - and it is open source!
Perhaps you could use this as an opportunity to help drag the USA into the 21st century but using those wireless handheld credit-card swipe devices that are common in Europe, Japan and elsewhere?
There is nothing worse in the US than being ready to leave after a nice meal, the waiter/waitress having dissapeared somewhere with your credit card, and you are waiting impatiently for their return - which often takes an inordinate amount of time for some reason (perhaps they get distracted?).
There are several low-cost PDAs that can run Linux around.
<whine> "Animals have feelings too..." </whine>
As a scientist who studies cognition in all animals, including humans, I can tell you that in the case of any mammal, while their feelings are not the same as ours, they're pretty damn close.
Luckily, they don't have the same broad autobiographical understanding of 'self', and hence don't feer death in the same way (they typically have a very shallow understanding of death, but still obviously fear pain)
Having said that; I aggee with your first statement, but probably not with specifically which traits.
When fresh, most onions are already tear-free. Its only if you leave them sitting around for 3-4 days that they start to slowly decompose and produce the chemicals that cause tearing.
Perhaps a better solution would be to improve the terrible quality of packaging, distribution and inventory management of most retailers of onions so that consumers can get them fresh. This would obviously benefit almost all other produce as well.
It would be better if the new high-res pictures could be more easily identified with the originals (I know it is hard with the difference in lighting angles, etc.)
I can just imagine what the conspiracy theorists are thinking now - 'those are not pictures of the same features - cover up! cover up!'
You're probably right - the 20year figure came from the original article. I guess he's wrong on that count too.
Europe emphasized cooperation over competition, consensus and agreement over "let's try it and see what happens". It was viewed as important that there be compatibility over the whole continent, and to achieve that they outlawed competition. In the US, we valued competition, and ironically we not only ended up with compatibility over the whole continent but got that compatibility with a superior system which emerged out of competition.
I think Steven is missing the point. He claims (twice) that the chaos in the US was temporary and not longer exists. That is a joke. I have a sprint phone and I'm often somewhere that I have no service, but my friend's GSM phone does, or vice-versa. I also work only 15miles from a city and the interstate, but my sprint phone goes into Analog roam mode! Call that not chaotic?? It's a joke.
So for the last 20years, the GSM world has had seemless coverage and portability, while the US is still a mess (I have a tri-band phone! - imaging how expensive that is to make).
Macro-economics 101 reminds us that the price of a good or service is determined by the intersection of supply and demand curves. That is, it has nothing to do with the price of manufacturing of the phones or the infrastructure rollout (except by providing a lower limit). I'm glad the GSM companies sholdered the larger costs of a less efficient technology for the last 20 years - and I'll be glad when I move back to a GSM country too!
Ask yourself why the US is among those developed countries with the lowest per-capita adoption of cell phones.
I'm going to make my next phone a 3G while I leave Steven trying to understand his analog roaming fees on his quad-band phone that won't work at all outside the US :)
It's Farscape-ese for f**k.
Actuallly, Paris *is* in the list - at no. 9.
It's probably a survival mechanism. It also occurs in humans, but is exceedingly rare (I don't remember the medical term for it). Something like only 3 cases ever recorded in the US.
Actually, I just realized the poster's drives are all in a single file-server, not distributed across a server farm. (time to sleep I guess)
If I understand LVM correctly, it doesn't do what the poster wishes. It will allow him to choose which logical subdirs reside where, but not have all his files everywhere.
It seems like a distributed filesystem, like InterMezzo or Coda would be a better match. That way his files are everywhere and the fs automatically manages updates regardless of where changes are made - including after disconnected operation.
I was in exactly your position. I thought that having Math listed as a Major on my record would be well worl it. Well it wasn't.
I wish I'd spent the time to take some of the other classes I was interested in. In the end what mattered were my math skills, not if math was listed on my transcript as a major or not. A couple classes in undergrad won't make much difference to your math skills anyway.
Once you have some experience, you'll be able to teach yourself any math you need from text books and papers/journals. Typically you'll forget much of what you learnt in undergrad, but become more expert in the areas you use. When you find that you need to brush up on stuff you've done in undergrad but forgotten - relearning the second time will be much easier.
So my advice is, unless you want to primarily be a mathematician, drop a couple classes and broaden your education instead.
Have fun.
Throw it up on source-forge and invite anyone to help finishing writing it! I'm sure many would be thrilled to be able to say a little piece of their code is responsible for launching a shuttle.
NASA could just try to sustain a team responsible for writing, maintain and running test cases over the code so they could still be confident it works as specified.
Failing all else, why not buy a PDA and write an app that mimics the interface of the calculator? (or modify it to be whatever you want).
There are bound to be open source calculator apps for Palm OS out there you can start with and modify.